Monday, February 9, 2009

We got a house!!

It's amazing how stressful finding a house has been!  We didn't want to live on base because there is no air conditioning and it gets very hot and humid in August and September (Texas temps, it even breaks 100!) and the only housing available was on the far side of base.  The road can be pretty treacherous on icy/snowy days and y'all know I'm afraid of driving on ice.

We looked at a couple of houses that just would not work for us, and then we finally found one we liked.  We went in Monday afternoon (yesterday) to reserve it and it had been reserved Monday morning.  We were supposed to go look at another one this afternoon but it was reserved already and the realtor hasn't even let anyone in to look at it!  Thinking back, it probably wouldn't have worked for us because it was in the Japanese style with sliding screens for a lot of the interior walls.  While that's really cool to look at, we may not have had enough outside walls for the bookcases and we have to secure those to the walls so Annelise can't pull them down.  (Have you seen that episode of Grey's Anatomy?)

So John found out about an open house today and we rushed over during his lunch hour to see it.  Three couples had already looked at it, but we managed to get back on base and reserve it before anyone else did.  It is two stories and has a very open floor plan on the first floor.  The second floor is all bedrooms, which are little small, but we'll make do.  The best part is that there are 2 bathrooms and we have a huge master closet.  There's also a carport and a small yard, this is going to be a great house to raise Annelise in.  We'll have to buy baby gates and some storage furniture, but it will all work out.

We'll be spending this weekend looking for used furniture for the kitchen and living room, we need some storage pieces, and we'll also order new bedroom furniture for us.  I can't wait for all of our household goods to get here so I can set things up, especially Annelise's room.  She hasn't slept in her crib yet and I am really looking forward to putting up all of the decorations I bought, especially the quilts that were made for her.

By the way, I updated our shutterfly site, click on the link on the right side of the page to see pics of stuff we've done and seen here in Japan!